Flash CS3 changes SWF embedding
I've been messing around with Flash CS3 on my Macbook Pro, and thus far it's a fantastic upgrade. Not because of new features or the "Adobe interface" (which honestly is just Adobe tabs wrapping old Macromedia UI elements), but because Flash CS3 is a Universal Binary for Intel powered Macs. And...wow. What a difference. CS3 launches in barely a second,...Continue
May 22, 2006SlideShowPro Director
The SlideShowPro brand has given birth to a new application -- SlideShowPro Director. What's Director all about? Well, it's the result of many months of feedback from SlideShowPro users looking for an easier way to get their photos into the Flash component. Director installs on any Linux box with PHP/MySQL, and handles all your XML publishing, thumbnail creation, album organization,...Continue
May 02, 2006Thoughts on ABC.com's full episode streaming
Chances are you've already noticed that ABC.com is streaming full length episodes of some of their more popular shows. This normally wouldn't be news with everyone jumping into video these days, but there are two things that set it apart. One, it's free. Two, it's amazingly open to anyone (in the US) who wants to watch. Normally with sites like...Continue
Macromedia.com is gone
So that's it. Macromedia.com is gone and is now just a mirror for Adobe.com. What's most interesting to me is that not only did the two companies merge, but their web sites did as well. The general layout and UI of Macromedia.com is now the overarching structure of the merged site, but the colors and other graphical assets have been...Continue
April 20, 2006Flash 8 Active Content Update
By now you've probably heard that Internet Explorer 7 will usher in big changes for Flash -- namely, the inclusion of new permission dialog box that pops-up whenever the browser loads a page containing a Flash movie. Not every Flash movie, but only those using the standard HTML embed code published by the Flash IDE. This isn't unique to Flash,...Continue
January 13, 2006Universal Binary Flash Player?
So here's an interesting dilemma. According to this Apple technote, any internet plug-in, "typically incorporated via the embed tag, will also need to be built as universal binaries to run in Dashboard as well as Safari on Intel-based Macs." Which leads to an obvious question -- with Intel-powered iMacs now shipping, and new MacBooks on the immediate horizon, what will...Continue
December 05, 2005Flash Player and Adobe Reader to combine
According to this FAQ on the Adobe web site concerning the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe, big changes are coming to Flash -- namely, they plan on combining the Flash Player with Adobe Reader. Why, you ask? Because it "will allow us to deliver a truly ubiquitous platform that sits on virtually every device. We will build on that to...Continue
September 19, 2005How to create a gradient mask in Flash 8
Gradient masks are an every-day designer trick to gradually fade the opacity of an object. Just about every bitmap software application (notably Photoshop) has offered them for years, but Flash has never supported them. Designers have traditionally worked around Flash's limitation by importing semi-transparent PNGs or by fudging the effect with layered semi-transparent shapes, but true semi-transparent masks in Flash...Continue
September 13, 2005The best new feature in Flash 8
Without a doubt, there are plenty of things to be excited about in the just released Flash 8 -- filters, bitmap caching, new video codec, UI improvements -- but the one I'm most giddy about is the least sexy of the bunch, yet could have the greatest impact for the general public. I'm talking about FlashType. Typography in Flash has...Continue
April 18, 2005Adobe Buys Macromedia
What!?!?? WHHHAATTT? Adobe to buy Macromedia? Okay, now that I've had at least thirty minutes or so to jam my eyes back in their sockets, a few quick thoughts on this. First, and I'm honestly not trying to be overly dramatic, but for me this is the end of an era. Macromedia was the younger, more tech-savvy upstart eating into...Continue
March 04, 2005The Flash / Yahoo Toolbar Debate
By now you've likely heard that Macromedia recently launched a deal with Yahoo! whereby Internet Explorer users on Windows can download the latest Flash player bundled with the Yahoo! toolbar. Lots of people are annoyed, most notably Flash developers and those concerned about sneaky software bundling in the age of spyware and malicious browser hijacking. My feelings on the matter?...Continue
March 01, 2005Pop-ups sneaking into Safari
If you're a Safari user, chances are you've seen some strange things in your browser lately. Internet Explorer users on Windows are all too familiar with the putrid little beasts, but I hadn't seen one in quite a long time. Yet, there it was -- a pop-up ad for Verizon Wireless, tucked behind the page I had just visited (which...Continue
December 13, 2004When Complete is Not Complete
Here's another "gotcha" tip for all you Flash developers out there who haven't used the new MovieClipLoader class supported by Flash Player 7. For the uninitiated, the class is a handy little object that contains a number of listener callback methods, each returning properties about your dynamic content so you can quickly create preloaders or execute further actions when and...Continue
November 29, 2004SlideShow on the Way
A few months back I posted some open source ActionScript to create a dynamic, cross-fading image loader in Flash. Since then I've received countless emails (most from wanderers who typed "Flash slide show" into Google, which returns my post as the number one result) asking how to use, customize, and incorporate the code into existing content. Most were able to...Continue
October 20, 2004setInterval in ActionScript 2 gotcha
Here's a quick ActionScript 2.0 tip for anyone using the setInterval method within a class. If you follow the standard usage guidelines of the function, you would normally include two parameters -- the function to call when the interval is over, how many milliseconds you want to wait between calls, plus any additional parameters the called function should receive. Normally...Continue
June 22, 2004Wanted: Flash Developers in Atlanta
Lately I've been hit from all sides regarding recommendations for Flash developers in Atlanta. Some requests are for small, freelance type gigs, others are potentially full-time. If cloning technology existed, I would gladly dupe myself to pick up all the work, but there are only so many hours in the day. So here's the deal -- if you have (at...Continue
May 26, 2004The Anti-Bush Game
You've never seen a Flash game quite like this. Check out the anti-Bush online adventure, which can only be experienced and not described. Click "Play", then click through a bunch of intro screens to get to the actual game. You can alternately choose "Screenshots" to see the goods, or "Download" to play it offline. Note: Parts of this are definitely...Continue
April 23, 2004BBEdit ActionScript Syntax Coloring
Many months back there was a free ActionScript language module for BBEdit that enabled syntax coloring for *.as files. It was a big help for those (like me) who prefer to use external text editors (rather than the built-in Flash editor), but the module has been notoriously difficult to find. Thanks to a reader of this site, I'm filling the...Continue
April 14, 2004Flash slide show source
Update (2/14/05): The content in this post is old -- the source has been updated to a new Flash MX 2004 component named SlideShowPro. Quite often I receive emails inquiring about various Flash pieces I've created, and the one that has attracted the most attention (and requests for source code) is the dynamic, cross-fading image loader used on The 2003...Continue
March 09, 2004Create Frame Sequence extension for Flash
In collaboration with Guy Watson (my idea, his coding), Create Frame Sequence is a handy (and free) .jsfl extension for Flash MX 2004 that takes a selection of keyframes, and moves them -- in the order in which they were selected -- into individual keyframes in a new layer. The need to do this arose when I imported nearly 50...Continue
February 09, 2004New Flash Ad Kit for DoubleClick
Perhaps I'm late noticing this, but Macromedia has released a new DoubleClick Flash Ad Kit to speed development of rich media advertising. Kit installs a number of publishing templates to Flash to quickly build all those popping, floating, expanding, annoying-as-hell Flash-based advertisements (ones I thankfully never see because of my browser of choice). But because these spawns of Satan are...Continue
January 31, 2004PGA Merchandise Show Flash App
Currently underway in Orlando, Florida, the PGA Merchandise Show is an enormous four-day expo attended by just about everyone involved in the world of golf. As part of PGA.com's presence at the event, I developed and designed a Flash application that could run on multiple 42" plasma displays stationed throughout the 500,000 square foot convention hall. The challenge, for me,...Continue
January 26, 2004MovieClip Tweening Prototypes
Lately I've been working on a component-based Flash application for PGA to be used in an upcoming event -- one that will include a variety of news feeds (via RSS), schedule of events, photos, and other data that will rotate every half minute or so. Because the app will be used internally, I decided to try out some of the...Continue
January 10, 2004Flash MX stop() Command Tool
Chances are if you've used Flash long enough, you've repeated the following task innumerable times -- select a frame on the timeline, make it an empty keyframe, open the ActionScript editor window, click inside the editing frame, type "stop();" For years I have wondered why Macromedia didn't offer a pull-down menu, or contextual menu, something to facilitate the instant creation...Continue
November 17, 2003Crack it with Flare
Earlier today Jason Zada pointed me in the direction of Flare, a Windows, Mac, and Linux based ActionScript decompiler for swf files that is a must-have utility for any Flash developer. ActionScript decompilers are nothing new (check out ActionScript Viewer for the most robust of the bunch), but Flare is unique in both its simplicity, and cost. Flare only decompiles,...Continue
November 12, 2003Flash Bitmap-Shift Bug Fixed? Sorta.
A few weeks ago I rather excitedly reported that the bitmap-shifting-bug that has plagued Flash since version 3 (yes, you read that correctly) was finally, thankfully, fixed. After a little further experimentation, it turns out I was halfway right. And, well, halfway wrong. To spare you the long story, Flash has historically stretched / smudged the edges of any imported...Continue
October 02, 2003Flash's New MovieClipLoader Class
As part of my ongoing experimentation with the new features of Flash MX 2004, I recently gave the new MovieClipLoader ActionScript class a real-world run through. The results were overwhelmingly positive, but with one big issue that could cause some developers headaches. To preface this, I should note that the preloading of content in Flash, despite its near ubiquitous nature,...Continue
September 19, 2003Finally! Correct Bitmap Support in Flash
Hear ye hear ye! One of Macromedia Flash's oldest, most annoying bugs has finally been fixed -- correct rendering of imported bitmap images. For years, Flash developers have been forced to jump through a series of unnecessary, annoying, time-sucking steps to get around a Flash player bug which mangled any image without whitespace around its perimeter. If your image was...Continue
September 11, 2003CSS Support in Flash MX 2004
After downloading Flash MX 2004 Pro from Macromedia yesterday, one of the first features I wanted to check out was Flash Player 7's support for CSS. In case you haven't heard, the new player allows developers to load external CSS documents, or create in-line styles in ActionScript, to control the presentation of text fields; a long-standing (at least for me)...Continue
September 02, 2003Breaking Out of the QuickTime Box
One of the emerging web design techniques I've been quite interested in lately is the creative presentation of video in Flash player 6. Unlike embedded QuickTime video objects, which play in an autonomous, square, black hole, video in Flash can become a fully integrated component of an overall visual design. For years, designers have worked around the "black hole" by...Continue
August 25, 2003Back to the Future
Back to life, back to reality. After numerous days of nearly zero online activity, I flipped on the Mac this morning and was smacked over the head by this. As with every update to Flash, I greet each release with an odd mix of excitement and anxiety. Excitement, to see all the new toys the Macromedia elves have devilishly conjured...Continue
August 05, 2003New Objects, Methods in Flash 7
For Flash nerds only - check out this interesting list of methods and objects found in the public beta of Flash Player 7. The ones that stand out to me are MovieClipLoader, which seems to be an answer to Moock's "Petition to Macromedia" for a preloading API, style sheets for Text fields (CSS? or an internal style object?), mouse scroll...Continue
April 22, 2003Macromedia Acquires Firefly
Last summer at FlashForward I was one of a handful of lucky people to win a copy - or, at least a future copy - of Firefly from CyberSage. Since then I've been downloading, and test driving, the suite of drag and drop Flash MX components which act as a web services gateway with hardly any ActionScript needed from the...Continue
March 18, 2003Flash MX Glossary for BBEdit
For those OS X developers who prefer to use BBEdit for all their coding needs, and cringe at the thought of using Flash MX's built-in ActionScript editor, you now have a choice. Thanks to Chris Jenkins, you can now download a free Flash MX glossary for BBEdit featuring the entire library of built-in Flash MX objects, classes, methods, and more....Continue
March 05, 2003Asset Mover for OS X Released
Recently I wrote about Asset Mover - a standalone application for Windows that moves shared library assets in your Flash movies for more accurate preloaders. At the time, it was only available for Windows. Now FlexiDev has released an OS X build for Mac-based Flash developers everywhere. If you use a preloader in the first frame of any of your...Continue
February 24, 2003Were-Here? Or Gone?
For the past few months a lot of people in the Flash / ActionScript universe have been asking the same question - where did Were-Here go? Once a mighty, vibrant online forum of Flash developers exchanging tips and code reviews, the site has been dark for many weeks. The forums of Ultrashock have filled the gap in the meantime, but...Continue
February 13, 2003Safari Beta 60
In case you missed it yesterday, Apple has released a new beta build of Safari. While you won't notice anything at all different with the interface, the back-end has seen numerous improvements in JavaScript, security certificates, support for XML, and a noteworthy boost to Flash player performance. Flash content now plays nearly as fast as Internet Explorer for OS X,...Continue
January 22, 2003Move Linked Assets in Flash
As any Flash developer will tell you, dynamically linked, shared assets (sound, movies, components) from the application library is a great tool. What stinks however, is the implementation. In order for the assets to be available, on demand, the application exports the content in the first frame of your movie. But what else do most people have in their first...Continue
October 23, 2002Page Turning Interfaces
Today I bumped into two examples of a rather interesting navigational idea for Flash, namely the turning of pages with the mouse to simulate the hand. Pixelwit's PageFlip was the first example I found, only to notice that it was actually inspired by the navigation of Perfect Fools Digital Productions, an interactive production company in Stockholm, Sweden. With some added...Continue
October 19, 2002Moock is Back with a 2nd Edition
Colin Moock has completed the second edition of his classic O'Reilly book ActionScript: The Definitive Guide, with an expected street date of December 1, 2002. Pre-orders are now being accepted....Continue
October 13, 2002k10k Features Flash MX Turntable. App updated.
Thanks to the crew over at k10k, our recently launched Flash MX Turntable is now a featured issue at the popular design community site. The Flash app, which admittedly soaks up a chunk of server space and bandwidth, will now and forever more be served from their Media Temple backbone. I'm pretty excited about the deal, for the piece will...Continue
October 10, 2002Flash MX Turntable Launched
It was nearly two months ago today that I wrote about updating my Flash turntable experiment, originally created in Flash 4, using nothing but Flash MX specific ActionScript syntax. Today Dominey Design launches the result - Flash MX Turntable. Because so many of the improvements are "under the hood," the following are some of the most notable changes to the...Continue
July 25, 200230% of Web Surfers Have Flash Player 6
According to the latest Flash Player Version Penetration page over at Macromedia, between 30 and 37 percent of web surfers can view Flash Player 6 content. Fueled in part by sales of Windows XP, which bundled the Flash 6 player, adoption rates rocketed from virtually zero in March to almost a third of all web users. At this rate, Flash...Continue
July 14, 2002Flashforward Notebook
Note: various photos from the conference and night time pleasures can be seen on the photos page. The quality is mixed, and I wish I could have taken more of the event itself, but there are only so many interesting angles of a hotel conference room. * * * And so it ends - Flashforward 2002 in New York. This...Continue
July 08, 2002I * NY
Tomorrow morning I leave for New York to attend the 2002 Flashforward conference and film festival. This is my first Flashforward, so I'm really looking forward to meeting in person many of the people I've only spoken to online (you know who you are). Three full days of seminars, exhibitions and parties, plus evenings visiting some old friends. I hope...Continue
July 07, 2002Shared Font Hell
Despite all the wonderful advancements of Flash MX, there are still a number of old, buggy behaviors that have plagued developers for years. I used to create Flash movies with shared content, namely symbols, movie clips, and fonts that were "shared" by multiple movies with the supposed plus being reduced file size and consolidation of assets. None of it works...Continue
July 02, 2002Macromedia and Opera Join for Mac Development
Perhaps it's late in the day, and my brain hasn't completely cooled down from two days of zero air conditioning, but why in the world is Macromedia joining efforts with Opera to create an embeddable browser for the Mac? It would appear Macromedia wants to integrate Opera into their applications, perhaps to offer a seamless previewing environment that does not...Continue
June 08, 2002Flashforward 2002 People's Choice Vote
Got a little extra time to burn? Good. Head on over to the Flashforward2002NYC People's Choice Vote and check out a variety of nominees in the Application, Art, Cartoon, Commercial, Experimental, Game, Information Graphics, Motion Graphics, Navigation, Original Sound, Story, Technical, Typography, 3D, and Video categories....Continue
June 04, 2002Flashforward 2002
A little over a month from now my wife and I will hop on a plane for NYC to attend Flashforward 2002, July 10-12 at the New Yorker Hotel. Actually, I'll be attending the conference during the day while my better half visits a bunch of old friends, leaving our evenings wide open (as we like them to be in...Continue
June 03, 2002Macromedia Hires Jakob Nielsen
Okay, so let me get this straight. Jakob Nielsen, a self-penned usability "expert," writes an essay that drags Macromedia and the Flash development community through the mud. Macromedia reads the essay, believes he must know something, 'cause he sure sounds pissed, so they form a partnership with the guy. Lesson learned: if you want to be awarded a fat contract...Continue
April 30, 2002Goodbye Flash MX Video?
Apple has filed a lawsuit against Sorenson, a company that has developed and licensed video compression technology for QuickTime, due to the company's involvement with Macromedia, namely the licensing of a video compression codec to Flash MX. Apple claims the Sorenson / Macromedia deal is a breach of contract, which Sorenson denies - stating that the compression technology used in...Continue
Colored ActionScript in BBEdit
If you happen to use BBEdit for editing ActionScript files (*.as), download this handy language plug-in that colors your syntax. I would hope Bare Bones considers adding support for ActionScript in future revisions....Continue
April 29, 2002Scared of Flash MX
This thread over at were-here.com is quite long, but a very good read concerning the release, and potential future of Flash now that Macromedia is pushing application development full tilt. The concern? That like the gradual integration (or erosion) of the desktop publishing industry to in-house advertising agencies, Flash is splintering itself into two camps - designers, and developers -...Continue
April 27, 2002IE 5.14 Upgrade Installs Flash Player 5
I've been cussing up a storm for about an hour trying to figure out why some of my Flash MX swf files wouldn't play in IE, when they used to work just fine. Turns out that the recently released update to IE for Mac OS X and 9 installs Flash player 5, effectively erasing the 6 player from your HD....Continue
March 31, 2002Survivor: Flash Powered Polling
You may not watch, let alone care, about the fourth installment of CBS's reality show Survivor, but CBS has done a marvelous job using Flash as a voting application on their Survivor 4 web site. Every week, viewers can vote for their favorite contestants and who they believe will be the sole survivor. Contestant's popularity and probability of winning fluctuate...Continue
March 28, 2002Flash MX Easter Egg
Easter is here a few days early. Thanks to some crafty Flash developers over at were-here.com, an Easter Egg the size of a full blown video arcade has been found in Macromedia Flash MX. I won't go into too much detail, for finding the hidden games are part of the fun. Here's a hint though - open your "About Flash...Continue
March 21, 2002Colin Moock and Flash MX
Colin Moock, author of ActionScript: The Definitive Guide, has posted a FAQ to answer questions regarding changes to the ActionScript code base introduced by Flash MX that could affect the content of his book....Continue
March 19, 2002MX Application Dev Center
Contrary to Flash 5 and 4, the upgrade to MX is receiving far more resources, tutorials, and general assistance from Macromedia. Case in point: a new Macromedia Flash MX Application Development Center with some nice sample applications, deployment kits, tutorials, white papers, and even an address book produced by Colin Moock. Lots of goodies....Continue
March 04, 2002Macromedia Announces Flash MX
Now it's official. The next version of Macromedia Flash will follow that time-honored marketing tradition of shoving the character X into their software title for no logical reason. Macromedia has unveiled Flash MX, aka Flash 6, featuring a more logical, Dreamweaver-style GUI, a more robust ActionScript editor, native support for importing video, and even a snappy new logo. For those...Continue
February 27, 2002Flash 5 for Pocket PC
Macromedia Flash Player 5 is now available for owners of Casio devices running Pocket PC. Considering the previous device player was a rather shoddy developer build of player 4, this is a great leap forward for delivering rich Flash media to portable devices running Pocket PC. Expect to see Player 5 rolled out for other Pocket PC devices in the...Continue
February 21, 2002Flash Player 6 Beta 2
Macromedia has posted a second public beta of the Flash player browser plug-in. Get ready...aqua-fied Flash running natively under Mac OSX is coming very soon. In related OSX browser news, OmniGroup is coming along very nicely with their OSX only browser OmniWeb 4.1. The most recent builds are so close to fully supporting CSS layout you can taste it. What...Continue
February 13, 2002QuickTime 6 - 2 Cents
For multimedia producers, the big news out of Cupertino yesterday was Apple's preview of QuickTime 6 featuring the long-awaited support for MPEG-4. I watched the live demonstration of QuickTime 6 over the net yesterday, and the quality of MPEG-4 was amazing. Quality, that is, in the sense of what you'd normally expect video encoded for web streaming to look like....Continue
February 07, 2002Flash 6 - Animations Are Just the Beginning
Looks like dynamically loading JPEGs may be only the beginning with Flash 6. I was surfing around some Flash related sites, and stumbled across this very interesting article by Russell Jones over at devx.com --"Macromedia Has Big Plans for Flash." Choice quote: "Macromedia plans to make Flash a platform for building applications rather than just animations and to make the...Continue
Flash 6 Dynamic JPEG
Well it looks like my post a few days ago about the "Poor Man's Generator" workaround to create JPEGs dynamically into SWF using PHP may be moot, for little tidbits of Flash 6 ActionScript are beginning to leak out, including... blank.loadMovie("test.jpg"); Create a blank movie clip on your stage, give it an instance name of "blank," and create a dummy...Continue
February 04, 2002Poor Man's Macromedia Generator
Would you like to have images in your Flash movies that can be dynamically updated, but can't afford 1000 bucks for Macromedia Generator? As long as you have a web host that provides support for PHP, you're in luck. Download the free FlashWriter Toolkit as written by Stefan Schuessler. The PHP script dynamically imports JPEGs (not Progressive) and spits out...Continue
February 01, 2002Flash 6 FPS Tests
I was able to run some quick non-scientific frame rate tests comparing the Flash 5 browser plug-in to the new Flash 6 public beta plug-in, and the news is good, especially in OSX. I ran these tests on my portfolio site using the FPS tester Extension, a free smart clip available at the Macromedia Exchange for Flash. The page has...Continue
Flash Player 6 Public Beta
If this isn't a sign that Flash 6 is coming soon, I don't know what is. Macromedia has posted a public beta of Flash Player 6 available for download. All flavors of Windows, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Macromedia has also released a a Flash 6 deployment kit for Windows and Macintosh to aid in the detection of...Continue
January 30, 2002LiveMotion 2 Screen Shots
Since I called into question today Macromedia's support for Flash, I thought a look at what Adobe is up to with LiveMotion would be interesting. Actionscript.com (how did Macromedia miss registering THAT domain name anyhow?) has posted a handful of LiveMotion 2 screenshots running very nicely under OSX. I never even looked at LiveMotion before, but boy oh boy --...Continue
November 29, 2001Flash 6 Beta
For those of you out there who develop Flash content, take a look at this. The web site is in Russia, and who knows how this guy got a hold on the beta, but he's posted some very, very interesting hi-res screenshots of the next version of Flash. He's also posted the standalone Flash 6 player, which smacks of being...Continue
October 27, 2001Beetle Buggin!
Beetle Buggin' is making me crazy! I love it. Tight pixels, wonderful illustrations, and a shiny red VW Beetle skidding around your desktop. The instructions, and web site, are all in German (not sure if there's an English version available), but it's worth playing with. [Hint: to get to the game, click on "spela" then click in the center of...Continue
